Monday, October 21, 2013

Teak Decking

I am a great fan of teak decks. Although as we all know, whilst they are ascetically beautiful, and nice under foot, they can cause major problems if not installed correctly or sufficiently maintained, especially on an older boat.
Luckily the "Cracker" (our nickname for the boat which requires a post of it's own to explain why) has had her decks replaced in the not to distant past. The info from the previous owner was that main decks are around 5 years old, and the upper decks are only a couple of years old.
Not owning the boat at the time, I can only guess at how the main decks were laid, but the construction is made up of 16mm ply with 8mm teak planks laid on top.
Thankfully there are only screws in the margin boards and no leaks in the actual boat, but there is a problem with the edge of they ply where it meets the scuppers. It seems that if the ply edge was sealed at all, the sealant has worn away leaving the bare edge ply open to the water from the scuppers, and has therefore started to rot.
My pre winter job list has consisted of making sure the boat is absolutely water tight before the rains begin, so this decking repair has suddenly risen to the top.

I am a great believer of the KIS method (keep is simple), so I simply sanded the edge of the decking along the scuppers and removed the worst of the rotten ply. Left it to dry over several sunny days to ensure there was no moisture trapped under the deck. Then after taping along the edge of the deck and about 1 cm from the deck in the scupper, using a spatula, I carefully filled the gap with SP Systems 2 part epoxy filler. To create a nice profile I went back along the filler with a half round rubber tool, thus both sealing the exposed ply and creating a nice profile.


Next was to sand the profile, which is a very labor intensive and boring job!


 Finally I will sand the bulwarks and prep for painting the lot with 2 part primer and 2 part Gloss top coat........but that is for another weekend and post!

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